Work at home luxury

Ever since we moved into our new house, working from home -- which I do about one a week -- has been less than ideal. We had this big klunky desk which we got rid of before the move. For now, we have our iMac setup on a makeshift desk, but my laptop was, well, relegated to my lap. Anyone who has a MacBook knows firsthand how impractical that is. Let's just say aluminum is an excellent conductor of heat ;^).

I looked at dozens of different desks and laptop stands online and locally. It's amazing the amount crappy, yet expensive, furniture that's out there. After far too much researching, I found this outfit CSN Office Funiture which has an excellent select of good quality, inexpensive and simple desks; three qualities that seem to occur together infrequently (I mean, check out the stock photos on the home page!). As will all "site unseen" purchases, it was a bit of a leap of faith, but I ordered what looked to be an ideal laptop desk for me (I mean, check out the cup holder! ;^).

It arrived on Friday and I put it together in about 15 minutes yesterday. It is sweet. The height adjusts pneumatically like a swivel chair via that round wheel petal at the bottom. You can adjust the angle of the laptop platform (which could double as a writing tablet or mini drafting table even). So it's basically exactly what I wanted, and I'm very happy with it. I also ordered a desk and chair from them as well, hopefully the experience will be just as good.

Delete in Screen

screen is one of those essential utilities everyone (at least everyone that touches *nix) should have in their toolbelt. In true Unix tradition, the default key mapping for the [delete] key is not what desktop users would normally expect. At least on Mac OS X, it acts as a "forward delete" when this key is typically the opposite.

Anyhow after scouring around a bit I found the following incantation to add to my .screenrc that makes the world safe for [delete] in screen:

bindkey -k kD stuff \177

And there was much rejoicing.